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Battle against bootleggers

8 July 1989

SENIOR executives and lawyers from Western computer companies met their
counterparts in the Soviet bloc this week to discuss laws to stamp out the
‘bootlegging’ of software, which is widespread in the Soviet Union. Alfred
Ailamazyan, the director of the Program Systems Institute in Pereslavl-Zalessky
near Moscow, described the problem as ‘technical terrorism’.

No such laws exist at present in the Soviet Union. This means that computer
operators throughout the Soviet hierarchy copy software routinely and with
impunity, even if it orginated in the West. The scale of the problem has
discouraged Western firms from trading software with the USSR. Soviet programmers
also resist developing novel software for fear of it being bootlegged. The
90 or so delegates issued a declaration which urged the Soviet government
to bring computer programs under the protection of law.